Panatag Shoal
The English name of the atoll came from Captain Philip D'Auvergne, whose East India Company East Indiaman Scarborough grounded on one of the rocks on 12 September 1784 before sailing on to China.
Geography
Scarborough Shoal forms a triangle-shaped chain of reefs and rocks with a perimeter of 46 km (29 mi). It covers an area of 150 km (58 sq mi), including an inner lagoon. The atolls' highest point, South Rock, is 1.8 m (5 ft 11 in) above sea-level at high tide. Located north of South Rock is a channel, approximately 370 m (1,214 ft) wide and 9–11 m (30–36 ft) deep, leading into the lagoon. Several other coral rocks encircle the lagoon, forming a large atoll.
The atoll is about 198 km (123 mi) west of Subic Bay. The 5,000–6,000 m (16,000–20,000 ft) deep Manila Trench lies between the atoll and the Philippine island of Luzon to the east. The nearest point of land is in Palauig, Zambales on Luzon island, 220 km (119 nmi) due east.
International Laws
The doctrine of intertemporal law was established after the Island of Palmas Case ruling. Under the doctrine, treaty rights are assessed under the laws in force at the time the treaty is made, not at the time a dispute takes place. The findings "Were any island within those described bounds ascertained to belong in fact to Japan, China, Great Britain or Holland, the United States could derive no valid title from its ostensible inclusion in the Spanish cession."
International law on claims differ if the territory is inhabited or uninhabited. In the 1928 Island of Palmas case, for inhabited territories, the court stated that "although continuous in principle, sovereignty cannot be exercised in fact at every moment on every point of a territory. The intermittence and discontinuity compatible with the maintenance of the right necessarily differ according as inhabited or inhabited regions are involved, or region enclosed within territories in which sovereignty is incontestably displayed or again regions accessible from, for instance, the high seas." For uninhabited territories, the 1931 Clipperton Island case ruled that "if a territory, by virtue of the fact it was completely uninhabited, is, from the first moment when the occupying state makes its appearance there, at the absolute and undisputed disposition of that state, from the moment the taking of possession must be considered as accomplished, and the occupation is thereby completed. Xxx [T]he fact that [France] has not exercised her authority there in a positive manner does not imply the forfeiture of an acquisition already definitely perfected." The ruling was affirmed in the 1933 Eastern Greenland case.
In the Eastern Greenland Case between Norway and Denmark, the critical date doctrine was established. It was ruled by the Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ) that the Norwegian proclamation on July 10, 1931, annexing Eastern Greenland was the "critical date" in that specific case.
Under the principle of Uti possidetis juris, the boundaries of former colonies must be respected by all states. It was established after the Frontier Dispute case between Burkina Faso and Mali). The ICJ ruled that uti possidetis juris is a "general principle, which is logically connected with the phenomenon of the obtaining of independence, wherever it occurs. Its obvious purpose is to prevent the independence and stability of new States being endangered by fratricidal struggles provoked by the challenging of frontiers following the withdrawal of the administering power…Its purpose, at the time of the achievement of independence by the former Spanish colonies of America, was to scotch any designs which non-American colonizing powers might have on regions which had been assigned by the former metropolitan State to one division or another, but which were still uninhabited or unexplored."
In international law, maps cannot establish title to territory unless if it is attached to a treaty. Moreover, maps unilaterally produced by a state, even if not attached to a treaty, can bind the producing state if it is "adverse to its interest". This was established in the 2002 Delimitation of the Border between the State of Eritrea and Ethiopia case, and was affirmed further in the Pedra Blanca arbitration between Malaysia and Singapore in 2008, when the ICJ ruled: "The map still stands as a statement of geographical fact, especially when the State adversely affected has itself produced and disseminated it, even against its own interest."
History
Scarborough Shoal is named in English after a British civilian merchant ship, the Scarborough which grounded on the feature on 12 September 1748. The Philippines believes that it refers to one of the 3 islands, Galit, Panacot, and Lumbay shown off the coast of Central Luzon in the 1734 Velarde map amid maps were published with Scarborough shoal, Galit, Panacot and Lumbay in 1771 map.
A number of countries have made historic claims of the use of Scarborough Shoal. In April 1800 it was named Maroona Shoal, after being surveyed by the Santa Lucia, a Spanish frigate, and this name was used on a chart in 1808, but later replaced in the Philippines by the name Bajo de Masinglo. The name Maroona Shoal was still in dual use on marine charts in English in 1889.
China said that it has a Yuan dynasty map and subsequent surveys by the royal astronomer Guo Shoujing during Kublai Khan's reign showing that Scarborough Shoal had been used by Chinese fishermen since the thirteenth century. According to Filipino judge Antonio Carpio, maps of ancient China show the island of Hainan as the southernmost point of the country.
In 1734, the Spanish colonial government published the first edition of the Velarde map, showing the territories included in the territory of the Philippines. According to the Phlippines, the map shows actual sovereignty over the Scarborough Shoal (called Panacot in the map), and the Spratly Islands (referred as Los Bajos de Paragua), and is the earliest map which shows sovereignty over the said territories. The atolls' current name in English was chosen by Captain Philip D'Auvergne, whose East India Company East Indiaman Scarborough briefly grounded on one of the rocks on 12 September 1748, before sailing on to China.
There are Qing dynasty maps based on 1767 work that show multiple islands in the South China Sea.
In 1771, Jean Baptiste Nicholas D. D'Apre de Mannevillette published a map of the China Sea which includes Scarborough Shoal, along with Galit, Panacot. and Lumbay which are close to the Luzon coast. The Spanish colonial government of the territory of the Philippines launched the first ever survey of Scarborough Shoal on 4 May 1792. The survey, Plano de la Navigacion, was taken by Alejandro Malaspina aboard the ship Santa Lucía, with Filipino comrades. A chart published in 1794, shows Scarborough Shoal in some detail with the date of the grounding incident indicated, while showing Galit, Panacot and Lumbay only as dotted-line outlines. In 1808, the Spanish colonial government published the 1808 Carta General del Archipelago Filipino, showing the sovereign territory of the Philippines, which according to the Phlippines included Scarborough Shoal and the Spratly islands, as recognized by the international community. In 1875, a more complete edition of the Carta General del Archipelago Filipino was published by the Spanish colonial government as the official territory of the Philippines.
In 1898, after the Spanish-American War, Spain ceded the Philippines to the United States through the Treaty of Paris (1898), which had maps attached to it. However, Scarborough Shoal, the Spratlys, and parts of Tawi-tawi remained in Spanish hands as they were excluded in the treaty lines. This led to the signing of the Treaty of Washington (1900), which according to the Phlippines retroactively ceded Scarborough Shoal, the Spratly Islands, and the remaining parts of Tawi-tawi to the United States as part of the territory of the Philippines. During the Islas Palmas case, the United States, as representative of the territory of the Philippines, reiterated in a memorandum that the 1875 Carta General del Archipielago Filipino "is both an American official and a Spanish official map" of Philippine territory. According to the Philippines, this bound the United States on its recognition of the Scarborough Shoal and the Spratly Islands as Philippine territory. From 1899 to 1902, the United States war department in the territory of the Philippines republished and reissued four times the 1875 Carta General del Archipelago Filipino with the addition of military telegraph lines, military cable lines, eastern cable company lines, and military department boundaries. The maps included Scarborough Shoal as part of Philippine territory, according to the Phlippines.
In 1909 China led an expedition to the Paracels and for the first time formally declared its claim.
International salvage litigation resulting from the wreck of the Swedish ship Nippon on 8 May 1913, on Scarborough Shoal, was heard and recognised by the claimants in the Philippines.
In the 1930s China and the Philippines, each without the knowledge of the other, pursued actions relevant to their claims on the Scarborough Shoal.
China published a map including Scarborough Shoal as its territory in April 1935.
In 1935, the Philippines adopted the 1935 Philippine Constitution, which reiterated the territory of the Philippines as per the 1898 Treaty of Paris, the 1900 Treaty of Washington, and the 1930 US-UK Treaty.
In 1938, the Commonwealth of the Philippines asked the U.S. State Department to determine ownership of the Scarborough Shoal, but there was no documentary evidence of an official Philippine claim to Scarborough Shoal.
In 1943, China published "China Handbook (1937-1943)" during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Its southernmost territory was defined as "Triton Island of the Paracel Group". China revised the content in 1947, claiming the Spratlys as their southernmost territory for the first time in history. In the 1947 China Handbook, China specifically recognizes that the Spratlys are contested among China, the Philippines, and Indochina.
The Philippine government conducted an oceanographic survey in 1957, and in 1965, the Philippine flag was raised in the area.
In an article from 18 February 1980, the Beijing Review confirmed that Guo Shoujing built an observatory in the Paracel Islands, and not Scarborough Shoal.
When China built their facilities on Mischief Reef within the Philippine EEZ in 1995, then National Security Advisor Jose T. Almonte pushed for the establishment of a lighthouse on Scarborough Shoal to bolster the Philippine claim. The parts of the lighthouse had been fabricated on the mainland Philippines but, according to Almontre, the project was scuttled for internal political reasons and to avoid antagonizing the Chinese.
The 2012 Scarborough Shoal standoff between China and the Philippines led to a situation where access to the atoll was restricted by the People's Republic of China. The expected intervention of the United States to protect its ally through an existing mutual defence treaty did not commence after the United States indirectly stated that it does not recognise any nation's sovereignty over Scarborough Shoal, leading to strained ties between the Philippines and the United States. In January 2013, the Philippines formally initiated arbitration proceedings against China's claim on the territories within the "nine-dash line" that includes Spratly Islands and Scarborough Shoal, which it said is "unlawful" under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). An arbitration tribunal was constituted under Annex VII of UNCLOS and it was decided in July 2013 that the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) would function as registry and provide administrative duties in the proceedings.
On 12 July 2016, the arbitrators of the tribunal of PCA ruled in favor of the Philippines on most of her submissions.. They concluded in the decision that there was no evidence that China had historically exercised exclusive control over the waters or resources, hence there was "no legal basis for China to claim historic rights" over the nine-dash line. Accordingly, the PCA tribunal decision is ruled as final and non-appealable by either country. The tribunal also criticised China's land reclamation projects and its construction of artificial islands in the Spratly Islands, saying that it had caused "severe harm to the coral reef environment". It also characterised Taiping Island and other features of the Spratly Islands as "rocks" under UNCLOS, and therefore are not entitled to a 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone. China however rejected the ruling, calling it "ill-founded". In 2019, Taiwan also rejected the ruling.
In late 2016, following the visit of Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte to seek warmer ties with China, the PRC gave "fishing rights" to Filipino vessels to access the atoll for fishing. In January 2018, Rappler reported that the Chinese Coast Guard frequently took the fish catch of Filipino fisherfolk, paying them "two bottles of mineral water" worth 20 pesos for every 3,000 pesos' worth of fish. On 14 June 2018, China's destruction of Scarborough Shoal's reefs surged to an extent which they became visible via satellites, as confirmed by the University of the Philippines Diliman.
Amid the steady deterioration of China-Philippines relations under Philippine president Bongbong Marcos on 30 April 2024, a Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) ship and a fisheries vessel, accompanied by invited journalists, attempted to approach the waters of the shoal. Chinese Coast Guard ships responded by firing water cannons at the vessels, which sustained damages. PCG spokesperson Commodore Jay Tarriela later said the water cannon incident was not an "armed attack" that could trigger the US-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty as there was no "death of a soldier or a member of the Philippine Coast Guard", citing Bongbong Marcos' earlier statement.
Land reclamation and other activities in the surrounding area
A March 2016 article by the Center for Strategic and International Studies' Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative said that satellite imagery had shown no signs of any land reclamation, dredging or construction activities in Scarborough shoal and the only vessels present were a Chinese civilian ship anchored within the mouth of the lagoon, which has been typical for several years, and two Filipino trimaran-type fishing ships outside the shoal. However, according to the then U.S. chief of naval operations Admiral John Richardson that did not mean that Chinese ships had not performed surveys in preparation for reclamation.
In September 2016 during the ASEAN summit, the Philippine government produced photos that it said showed fresh PRC construction activity at the atoll. A US administration official questioned the Philippines' claim, saying the United States had not detected any unusual activity at Scarborough Shoal.
Also in September 2016, the New York Times reported that PRC activities at the Shoal continued in the form of naval patrols and hydrographic surveys.
In March 2017 the mayor of Sansha City said China was to begin preparatory work for an environmental monitoring station on Scarborough Shoal.
PRC activities in and around the Scarborough Shoal have drawn criticism from US officials. In March 2017 U.S. Senators Marco Rubio and Ben Cardin introduced the South China Sea and East China Sea Sanctions Act which would impose sanctions for Chinese entities and people helping to build South and East China Sea projects.
In June 2019 the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) spotted a Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy warship, alongside two China Coast Guard vessels, and two Chinese maritime militia vessels near the shoal.
In September 2019, Antonio Carpio, a former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines, said that China would try to reclaim the Scarborough Shoal within Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's term before it signs the Asean-China Code of Conduct because Duterte had said that Beijing could not be stopped from building because it was too powerful.
Academic Jay Batongbacal said that the visiting forces agreement between the Philippines and the United States deterred the transformation of Scarborough Shoal by the PRC into an artificial island, saying, "Scarborough Shoal is the only piece left in the puzzle that they're trying to build. They can now completely exclude other countries from the South China Sea militarily if they're able to put into place all of these military bases."
On September 26, 2023, the Philippine Coast Guard announced that they conducted an operation to remove the floating barrier installed by Chinese Coast Guard officers near the shoal in the southeast. A new floating barrier was deployed in 2024.
Sovereignty dispute
Claims by China and Taiwan
The People's Republic of China and Taiwan (Republic of China) claim that Chinese people discovered the atoll centuries ago and that there is a long history of Chinese fishing activity in the area. The atoll lies within the nine-dash line drawn by China on maps marking its claim to islands and relevant waters consistent with United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) within the South China Sea. An article published in May 2012 in the People's Liberation Army Daily states that Chinese astronomer Guo Shoujing went to the island in 1279, under the Yuan dynasty, as part of an empire-wide survey called "Measurement of the Four Seas" (四海測驗). In 1979 historical geographer Han Zhenhua (韩振华) was among the first scholars to claim that the point called "Nanhai" (literally, "South Sea") in that astronomical survey referred to Scarborough Shoal. In 1980 during a conflict with Vietnam for sovereignty over the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands), however, the Chinese government issued an official document claiming that "Nanhai" in the 1279 survey was located in the Paracels. Historical geographer Niu Zhongxun defended this view in several articles. In 1990, a historian called Zeng Zhaoxuan (曾昭璇) argued instead that the Nanhai measuring point was located in Central Vietnam. Historian of astronomy Chen Meidong (陈美东) and historian of Chinese science Nathan Sivin have since agreed with Zeng's position in their respective books about Guo Shoujing. a 2019 article in the publication Maritime Issues suggested that a common fishing ground for China, Vietnam and the Philippines as the best option to avoid deterioration of the conflict.